THE PARIS LETTER
Monday, July 30th, 2012
Back in the pre-Stonewall decade when Anton Kilgallen and Sandy Sonnenberg were in their twenties, there were basically two choices for big city gay men. Anton opted for the first, living as “openly” as was possible in the underground world of illegal gay bars and private parties. Sandy chose the second, attempting a pseudo-straight lifestyle by marrying someone of the opposite sex and doing his best to repress whatever same-sex urges might threaten to erupt.
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INCIDENT AT VICHY
Saturday, July 28th, 2012
The mind still boggles and the heart still recoils at the statistics. Nearly 6,000,000 Jews killed, including 90% of the Polish Jewish population, 90% of German and Austrian Jews, and similarly high percentages in the Baltics and Czechoslovakia. If Jews in France fared “better,” with 74% their 350,000 surviving the Holocaust, these figures provided cold comfort to the 90,000 exterminated by the Nazis.
Arthur Miller puts a personal face on a dozen or so of these French victims of Nazi terrorism in his powerful Incident At Vichy, now being revived at the Sierra Madre Playhouse in a proscenium-staged production that comes close to matching what you’d see at the Pasadena Playhouse or any major regional theater, albeit on a smaller scale.
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ALL YOUR HARD WORK
Friday, July 27th, 2012
A decade or so ago, Jim and Mary-Ellen were college lovers, though perhaps not exclusively. Both seemed headed toward success, he in business, she in journalism. Now Jim is racking up those frequent flyer miles, doing business in fifteen cities in ten states, married, the father of a young child, and the owner of a “starter” house he was able to purchase with a $50,000 cash down payment. Mary-Ellen, on the other hand, works 12-hour shifts at Urban Outfitters, lives in a cramped studio apartment, and is just about the only person she knows without a spouse and children, though you could hardly call her celibate …or a teetotaler.
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MACBETH
Saturday, July 21st, 2012
Director extraordinaire Jessica Kubzansky humanizes the murderous Macbeth and his lethal Lady McB in a uniquely powerful production of Shakespeare’s “Scottish Play,” particularly as performed by a mashup of the Antaeus Company’s double-cast ensemble.
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THE EXORCIST
Saturday, July 14th, 2012RECOMMENDED
It takes chutzpah to adapt a horror movie classic for the stage, especially one as iconic as William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, one of the highest grossing films ever. Nominated for ten Oscars (and winning two for Adapted Screenplay and for Sound), The Exorcist not only spawned two sequels and a prequel, it was named Scariest Film Of All Time by Entertainment Weekly and Movies.com.
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JULIET &HER ROMEO
Saturday, June 30th, 2012
Vanguard Rep opens its Summer 2012 La Cañada Flintridge Shakespeare Festival with Juliet &her Romeo, Matthew Kellen Burgos’s 80-minute 3-actor adaptation of a play you might have read in high school.
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AUGUST WILSON’S JITNEY
Tuesday, June 26th, 2012
Back in 1979 when it was first written, August Wilson’s Jitney was a contemporary slice of African-American life as lived in Pittsburg, PA, and the first of a projected series of ten plays, each set in a different 20th Century decade. By the time Wilson completed his ambitious labor in 2005 with Radio Golf (set in the ‘90s), Jitney had morphed into a period piece, perhaps even more noteworthy for the look back in time it now offered.
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THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM
Tuesday, June 19th, 2012NOT RECOMMENDED
When deciding whether to spend an hour and a half with a trio of loony Irish sisters in Enda Walsh’s The New Electric Ballroom, the latest production of the multiple award-winning Rogue Machine, you might want to ask yourself how important it is for you to understand what’s happening onstage when watching a play. How important is it for you that a story should unfold in some kind of recognizable reality? How willing are you to suspend disbelief, ignore confusion, and simply go with the flow?
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Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
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